Archibold Masterman, tall, heavily-built, muscular, and on the wrong side of fifty, was universally esteemed an excellent specimen of that dubious product of modern commerce, the self-made man. At twenty he was a day-labourer, at thirty a jobbing builder, at forty a contractor in a large way of business. At that point may be dated the beginning of his social efflorescence. It was then that he began to wear broadcloth on week-days, and insisted on...